LILAC

The only other time I can remember my family camping with a group was when we went with our neighbors long ago, when my brother and I were children. We camped in a meadow surrounded by dense forest. The meadow had a noticeable slope and I remember feeling like we were going to fall off the edge of something. Of course everything remained firmly on the ground. The only other memory I have of this trip is the butterflies. The adults were relaxing, my brother and I were amusing ourselves collecting strange pebbles and leaves, when a cloud of butterflies blew in on a breeze. They were small and of the most delicate shade of lilac, so that if you saw them against the sky they would almost disappear. But the butterfly cloud hovered right above the ground, shivering in the first foot of air, and it stood out in stark contrast against the dirt and grass. It was a beautiful sight, but my brother and I walked right into the cloud and began to stomp, jumping into the air, using our arms to add strength to the jump, smashing the butterflies with all the strength our child bodies could summon. We laughed with glee! In less than five seconds the meadow floor was littered with tiny lilac corpses, as if small pieces of the sky had been shaken loose from our violent stomping. “Stop!” Cried the neighbor. Her cry shook the demon loose and my brother and I came to our senses. We stood still, transfixed by the pretty graveyard at our feet, while the remains of the butterfly cloud quivered around us, and then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, it left. “You should be nice to the butterflies,” she said, and suddenly I felt sad, ashamed. My brother and I exchanged looks that told of mutual confusion at what had come over us. One of us shouted “sorry butterflies!” at the ground, and then we both scurried off in pursuit of more strange pebbles.

It is night time and the moon is large and bright. My father is walking somewhere alone. This is strange because it’s late enough that everyone is long asleep. It’s the dead of night. He’s not walking leisurely, but as if he is possessed by some demon. He walks as if movement is the only thing grounding him. He lurches through the night and is suddenly at the far lake, the second lake, Nightmare Lake.

On this trip we were with a group as well. We were camping our way to the West Coast and had decided to spend a few nights at Dream Lakes. It was a beautiful and popular site, but something about it felt odd. Maybe it was the unexpected company or the landscape, but I kept having nightmares. This time, I wasn’t afraid I was going to fall off the edge of the earth, I was afraid I was going to fall into a lake. Dream Lakes had two lakes with the campsite between them. The first lake was large and close by. The forest thinned as you approached the water’s edge, and the lake was under clear blue sky, sunlight shimmering across the water’s surface. Once you were at the shore you saw how large it really was, big enough to take a boat on. This lake didn’t have a beach, the forest floor ended at a short ledge, like a swimming pool. If you weren’t paying attention, you might suddenly find yourself in waist deep water. About ten feet in, the water’s color changed abruptly to a deep indigo where the lake dropped off into unknown depths.

The second lake was farther way from the campsite and much smaller. The far lake, as some called it, was enveloped by trees. The forest got denser as it approached the far lake, and in many places there were trees in the water, submerged up to six feet. The dense forest at the far lake created a cool shade over it’s waters that stuck around almost all day. The second lake had a beach. The ground sloped down gently for the first twenty meters of water before it dropped off suddenly into the lake’s depths. This allowed for wading, and it was eerily beautiful to find yourself knee deep in cool water whilst still surrounded by trees. It felt almost as if the lake was luring the trees to its center, and if you weren’t careful, you might fall under the same spell. The gloom of the second lake kept people away and it didn’t take long before it became forbidden in the minds of the campers. By the first evening all the kids were calling it Nightmare Lake and talking about the ghosts or vicious animals that inhabited its depths and shores. By the second day all the adults had told the kids to stay away for fear they’d get confused by the trees and suddenly find themselves flailing in open water. Maybe I was less afraid of falling into Nightmare Lake as I was of it bewitching me into its depths.

My father stands beneath a large tree maybe ten yards from the water’s edge, leaning one hand against the trunk. He is still now and watches the far lake. Though he still appears on edge he has regained some control. He is deep in thought. So deep that he doesn’t notice someone approaching, coming from the direction of the camp. A twig snaps underfoot and suddenly my father is alert like a wild animal, stiff backed and sharp eyed he turns to see the figure, visible by the light of the moon. It’s the woman.

Our family kept to ourselves at Dream Lakes. Some of the campers liked to mingle, but we were content with our own company, and everyone respected that. Well, almost everyone. There was one strange woman who kept trying to seduce my father. I wondered if she was part of a spiritual group because every day she wore the same long, delicate dress that never seemed to get dirty. A pretty lilac that stood out in the muted forest. During the first day we noticed her casting glances his way, making no play at subtlety. By the second day she was finding any excuse to talk to him and touch his arm. She seemed to turn up everywhere. She was persistent but not aggressive, something about her seemed tragic to me. She was unable or unwilling to control herself. Perhaps she was lonely, desperate, naive, drunk? Certainly she had a tendency towards obsession. Well, her pursuit was not welcome and impossible to ignore. My family tried to make light of the situation; my mother would quip about how magnetic my father was while my brother and I would joke about love potions. But I could see how amusement turned to annoyance and then morphed into resentment and contempt within my father. She would not leave him alone, no matter how many of her advances he rejected! I also saw how he was unable to talk about the storm growing inside him, and how my mother either didn’t notice or didn’t know how to talk about it either. My father is more prone to brooding than talking, and my mother has little patience for brooding men. A dark cloud, pregnant with unspoken words, hung over our family, and still the oblivious attempts at seduction continued. I watched with helplessness and morbid fascination. What was wrong with these people? It was as if all three were under a spell, one of infatuation, one of muteness, and one of rage.

Had the woman followed him here or had they arranged to meet? Or perhaps their meeting is coincidental. My father’s body begins to tremble. The woman’s gown glows in the darkness. Suddenly the ten feet between them closes, he grabs the woman and drags her to the large tree by her hair, where he throws her to the ground. Not a sound is uttered by either; my father’s anger is cold and noiseless, the woman is dumb with shock. On the ground she is helpless as he hits her again and again and squeezes her throat.

Now they are in the lake and how did they get there? Did she run? Was she dragged? The woman is submerged up to her breast, she is deeper than my father. She stumbles and she is under. My father ducks under as well and as the woman splutters up to the surface, regaining her footing, he is still under. She is confused and frantic in her confusion, where is he? Where should she run? Terror consumes her and she stands paralyzed and choking on lake water. My father resurfaces, but his posture seems strange and bent. Dumb panic chokes her scream. Neither has yet uttered a single sound. There’s a splash as my father lifts something from just below the surface, a rock. It is almost too large for him to grasp. The rock is rough and sharp even though it came from the water. My father hefts it overhead, arching it behind him. Then, with the accuracy and force of channeled hatred, he hurls it at the woman’s face, hitting her square in the nose and forehead and bashing in her skull like the rind of a hard fruit. The blood is immediate and bursts from her face in a terrible spray. The blood continues, leaking with deadly speed, falling down her body and into the water without a sound. There it loses urgency and spreads in lazy rivulets, voluminous and beautiful. As the blood blooms in the water and then disperses through the lake, a strange, unsettling quiet settles over the site. The silence is my father’s. He is alive in the lull which follows action. The deepest lull which follows savagery. A savagery born not of instinct or need, but of festered hatred.

The quality of silence alters into a pounding, pregnant dread. The deafening silence of a head rush when your blood and brains pound like wet beads against the inside of your skull, when your vision goes blurry and deep green, and everything slowly rushes backwards to a viscous nothingness behind you. My father languishes in this thick dread until suddenly everything snaps. The viscosity of his abstract horror is swallowed by the air, leaving an acute anxiety. The whole night is sharpened and crisp, he now experiences his senses as if through the lens of some perfect drug.

The anxiety holds shock at his own violence, horror at its suddenness and permanence. The anxiety is selfish; he fears being caught, the endless guilt, the body before him, he fears living as himself. Suddenly he throws all his energy into a single wish: that he would wake in a cold sweat from this nightmare. He doesn’t realize he has been screwing his eyes shut until a movement in the water startles them open. The body has toppled and now floats face up, jostled gently by the rhythm of the water.

Self-preservation kicks in. Robotically, my father pulls the body from the water. The sound of it dragging through the shallows sickens him and he is nearly overcome with fright. The urge to sink to the ground in revulsion and mindless fear, shivering and twitching in the murk seems somehow comforting as compared to enduring one more second of that sound, as if his shadow were a great bleeding slug following him out of the lake.

How long till light and the stirring of the other campers? Of his family? How long till we notice his absence? The woman’s? And come searching, our voices calling for him and her, lilting through the woods with concern only to shatter upon the gruesome scene before us. He doesn’t know what time it is or how long he has been away from camp. The body finally clears the wet bank and the crunch of his shoes upon the pine needles rhymes disturbingly with the slither of wet hair dragging along the forest floor, he is dragging the body up towards the same tree where he last saw her.

The sight of the tree triggers the memory of the woman standing alive, breathing, it sends an electric shock through my father…

Suddenly I turn around take it in the other direction. Everything is hard but I am turned around now somehow and moving back towards the water. I will leave it in the lake!! Of course yes. The lake the lake the lake the la My feet hit the water i am so shocked and suddenly rigid with revulsion at its wetness now slimy with blood and other horrors. I cannot go any further in that direction. cannot submerge my crawling body and deeper. to go so deep to dispose of my hideous burden? No Besides. would it float or sink? I turn around and I’m dragging the body out of the pull of the lake. moving at a different angle than before. Five heaves in that direction and I am seized. suddenly blind. my frantic impulse. I’m jerked another way. lurching aimlessly so dark. But dark is good it must stay dark. A new fear. Will i wander stupidly in these woods all night chased by the body? why won’t it let go of me? What will end this madness? Collapse from exhaustion or? I don’t want to be awake when they find me. a man sobbing in panic. My ribs contract to a point and then they expand as big as a house 1 2 3 times faster and faster. i can’t even count. i can’t breathe any more! I change direction again and suddenly, from twenty feet away, i see The Figure.

My father becomes aware of The Figure. It is humanoid; lithe, tall, covered entirely in a smooth lilac skin. It’s hairless with no face or genitals. It’s limbs end in toeless and fingerless appendages, like fins. Immediately, my father trusts The Figure, so still over there, like the spirit of rationality fled his body. The Figure’s presence is commanding and once trust is established, reaches out a tendril of thought to my father’s wracked mind. My father relinquishes all decision making to it’s presence.

“bury it by the tree. let the slope of the land help to make depth.”

My father melts into the sense of purpose. He drags the body to the tree and crouches down at it’s base. By some strange luck the gnarled roots have dug into the ground sloping up from the lake in such a way as to make a small cavity, a home for an animal, or a grave. It is visible only from the perfect angle, and a long flat rock wedged in the roots acts as a roof to keep the earth above from caving in. My father begins to dig with his bare hands, widening and deepening the natural cavity to make it deep enough to hide his horror. He works efficiently. As he labors The Figure’s mind brushes against his with words of encouragement and my father glances up from his task to see that it is digging alongside him, it’s strange fin-like hands and feet working the earth as if they were adapted to dig.

In a haze of exhaustion, my father loses track of time. Eventually echoes of The Figure appear elsewhere among the trees, the moonlight glinting prettily off their sleek forms. The newcomers graze his mind with murmurs of encouragement and add their shovel hands to the task. The Figures seemed to flit in and out of my father’s line of vision and consciousness in a sort of dance, so that their movement syncs up with his digging and breathing. Their movement around him comes closer as he digs deep into the earth, and now sometimes he can feel one of them crouched behind him, cupping his body perfectly with it’s own so that as it reaches forward to dig he is enveloped in its embrace, his arms and hands synced with those of The Figure as if they were attached at the joints. He glances up and sees that a circle of The Figures has joined him at the grave, and together they lower the body down into the earth. The dance is reversed now, and as he looks down to his new labor he realizes that he is shoveling the earth back into the grave with both hands and one foot, his body and movements poised perfectly on one kneeling leg, his center of mass shifting gracefully with that of The Figure pressed against him. They move in a six limbed dance with the intensity of a fever dream. My father welcomes the escape. As they move together, he believes that everything will be better once the body is underground. He believes he can bury his horror with it.

My father finishes packing the grave. He blends the tilled earth with the forest floor. Mechanically, he stands upright and looks around him. The Figures have gone and so has the black of night, the woods are now bathed in the translucent blue of an impending dawn.

My father turns from the grave and doesn’t look back. His exhaustion numbs him and he is tempted by the thought of rest. His eyes are tired and he seems to see through things as he returns to camp. We rise to greet the morning. My father sets new eyes upon us. As I turn around and our eyes meet, every particle of his body screams as if writhing in an electric ocean. The waves crash and his heart stops. As he falls to the ground a cloud of lilac butterflies descends upon his body to lap at his sweat and her blood.

THE END